Installing Rational® Functional Tester

To get started, you must install Rational® Functional Tester.

Before you begin

  • You must have obtained the installation media or downloaded the installation package that is available on the IBM Passport Advantage site.
  • Your computer must have met the system requirements and completed the preinstallation tasks.
  • To enable the Installation Manager to search for the latest available version of the packages in the predefined IBM update repository, your computer must be connected to the Internet.
  • If you want to install the IBM® Rational® Functional Tester on Linux machine, the following libraries must be available on your machine.
    • libXp.so.6
    • libXm.so.4
  • To install Rational® Functional Tester on Red Hat Linux Enterprise (RHEL) 8.0 and later, you must have completed one of the following tasks:
    • Installed libnsl.so.1 on your computer
    • Created a soft link to libnsl.so.2 by running the following command:sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/libnsl.so.2 /usr/lib64/libnsl.so
  • To install Rational® Functional Tester on a computer with Ubuntu operating system, you must have installed libxm4 and libxp6 packages.
    • Add deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main to /etc/apt/sources.list
    • From the terminal, pass these commands:

      $ sudo apt-get update and $ sudo apt-get install libxm4 libxp6
    Note: You must install Rational® Functional Tester using either root user or Sudo access.
  • To install Rational® Functional Tester on the Windows® operating system and integrate it with Microsoft Visual Studio IDE, you must have installed the correct version of Microsoft Visual Studio.
    Note: Microsoft Visual Studio integration for Rational® Functional Tester might not get installed if the mandatory prerequisites are not installed, or if Microsoft Visual Studio is not installed properly. For more information, see Unable to install Rational® Functional Tester Extension for Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, 2017 & 2019.

Procedure

To install Rational® Functional Tester on Windows® or Linux® operating systems:
  1. If you are using the installation media, insert the media into the disk drive. If you are using the download package, extract the files from the downloaded .zip package to a temporary directory.
  2. Open the launchpad program to start the package installation:
    • On Windows: Click launchpad.exe.
    • On Linux: Click launchpad.sh.
  3. Click Install Rational Functional Tester.
  4. On the Installation Manager Start page, click Install.

    The Install Packages page lists all the packages found in the repositories that Installation Manager searched. If two versions of a package are discovered, only the most recent, or recommended version of the package is displayed. If Installation Manager is not installed on your computer, it is listed on the Install Packages page with Rational® Functional Tester.

    1. To display all versions of the packages that Installation Manager finds, click Show all versions.
      Note: To search the predefined IBM update repository locations for the installed packages, ensure that Search service repositories during installation and updates check box is selected on the Repositories preference page. This preference is selected by default.
      If updates for the Rational® Functional Tester package are found, then they are displayed on the Installation Packages list on the Install Packages page. The latest updates are displayed by default.
    2. To find other versions, fixes and extensions for the available packages in the update repository locations, click Check for Other Versions, Fixes and Extensions.
    3. To view all updates found for the available packages, click Show all versions.
    4. To display a package description under Details, click the package name. If additional information about the package is available, such as a readme file or release notes, a More info link is included at the end of the description text. To fully understand the package you are installing, review all information beforehand.
  5. Select Rational Functional Tester, the required version, and IBM® Installation Manager, if necessary and click Next.
    Updates that have dependencies are automatically selected and cleared together.
    Note: If you install multiple packages simultaneously, then all the packages will be installed into the same package group.
  6. On the Licenses page, read the license agreement for the selected package.

    If you select multiple packages to install, each package might contain a license agreement. On the left side of the License page, click each package version to display its license agreement. The package versions that you selected to install (for example, the base package and update) are listed under the package name.

    1. If you agree to the terms of all of the license agreements, click I accept the terms of the license agreements.
    2. Click Next to continue.
    Note: Rational® Functional Tester is also included in the Rational® Test Workbench package. You can use the Rational® Functional Tester license when you install Rational® Functional Tester through the Rational® Test Workbench package. However, if Rational® Test Workbench is installed on Microsoft® Windows® 2012, you cannot install and use Rational® Functional Tester on the same operating system.
  7. On the Location page, type the path for the shared resources directory in the Shared Resources Directory field, or accept the default path. The shared resources directory contains resources that can be shared by one or more package groups. Click Next to continue.
    Important: If you are installing Rational® Functional Tester on Windows®, and do not have Windows® Administrator privileges to work with Rational® Functional Tester, you must not choose a directory inside the Program Files directory (C:\Program Files\).
    The default path is:
    • For Windows®: C:\Program Files\IBM\IBMIMShared
    • For Linux®:/opt/IBM/IBMIMShared
    Important: You can specify the shared resources directory only the first time when you install a package. You must use your largest disk partition to ensure adequate disk space is available for the shared resources of future packages. You cannot change the directory location unless you uninstall all packages.
  8. Also, on the Location page, specify whether to create a package group and install the IBM® Rational® Functional Tester package into a new package group or use an existing package group to shell-share with another offering. A package group represents a directory in which packages share resources with other packages in the same group. To create a new package group:
    1. Click Create a new package group.
    2. Type the path for the installation directory for the package group.
      The name for the package group is created automatically.
      The default path is as follows:
      • For Windows®: C:\Program Files\IBM\SDP
      • For Linux®: /opt/IBM/SDP
      Note: If you are installing Rational® Functional Tester on a Linux® machine, ensure that you do not include any spaces in the directory path.
    3. Click Next to continue.
  9. On the next Location page, you can choose to extend an existing Eclipse IDE already installed on your system, adding the functionality in the packages that you are installing.
    Note: You must have Eclipse 3.6.2 with the latest updates from eclipse.org to select this option.
    • If you do not want to extend an existing Eclipse IDE, click Next to continue.
    • To extend an existing Eclipse IDE:
      1. Select Extend an existing Eclipse.
      2. In the Eclipse IDE field, type or navigate to the location of the folder containing the eclipse executable file (eclipse.exe or eclipse.bin). Installation Manager checks whether the Eclipse IDE version is valid for the package that you are installing. The Eclipse IDE JVM field displays the Java™ Virtual Machine (JVM) for the IDE that you specified.
      3. Click Next to continue.
  10. On the Features page under Languages, select the languages for the package group, and then click Next.

    The corresponding national language translations for the user interface and documentation for the Rational® Functional Tester package is installed.

  11. Select the package features that you want to install.
    1. Select or clear features in the packages. Installation Manager automatically enforces any dependencies with other features and displays the updated download size and disk space requirements for the installation.
      Feature Description
      Select Edition (Eclipse IDE) Provides an automated functional and regression testing of Windows®, .NET, Java™, HTML 5, Siebel, SAP, AJAX, PowerBuilder, Flex, Dojo, GEF, Visual Basic applications, Adobe® PDF documents, and zSeries®, iSeries®, and pSeries® applications through the Eclipse IDE. You can install a full licensed edition, which is available for Web UI testing. The .NET Framework 1.1 or 2.0 is required for testing Siebel and SAP applications.
      IBM® Rational® Functional Tester Extension for Selenium/Appium Provides the ability to run Selenium/Appium tests.
      Microsoft® Visual Studio .NET Integration Provides components to enable Visual Basic .NET scripting through the Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, 2017, or 2019 integrated development environment (IDE).
      Note: Microsoft Visual Studio integration for Rational® Functional Tester might not get installed if the mandatory prerequisites are not installed, or if Microsoft Visual Studio is not installed properly. For more information, see Unable to install Rational® Functional Tester Extension for Microsoft Visual Studio 2015, 2017 & 2019.
      Note: Uninstalling Microsoft Visual Studio: If you want to uninstall your existing Microsoft Visual Studio, you must first remove the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Integration of Rational® Functional Tester using the Modify option in Installation Manager. You must then uninstall Microsoft Visual Studio.
      Windows Desktop Application Testing (Next Generation) The Windows Desktop Application Testing (Next Generation) option, which is a default selection, provides the necessary prerequisites to test the Windows desktop applications. The Developer mode is enabled automatically when you restart your computer, if it was not enabled earlier.
      Java 8 OpenJDK with Eclipse OpenJ9 Provides the Java 8.0 binaries required for Rational® Functional Tester.
      Notes:
      • If you want to shell share Rational® Functional Tester along with other products that utilize OpenJDK, you must select Java 8 OpenJDK with Eclipse OpenJ9 for only one of the shell shared products. You must not install multiple instances of OpenJDK in the same package group.
      Jazz Eclipse Client for Rational Team Concert/Rational Quality Manager Manages functional test assets using the Jazz source control management provided by the Jazz Eclipse Client.

      You must have a compatible version of Rational Team Concert or Rational Quality Manager server setup to use the Jazz source control management. You must also have a platform that is also supported by the Rational Team Concert client.
    2. Optional: To see the dependency relationships between features, select Show Dependencies.
    3. Optional: Click a feature to view its brief description under Details.
    4. Click Next to continue.
  12. On the Summary page, review your choices before installing the Rational® Functional Tester package. If you want to change the choices that you made on previous pages, click Back and make your changes. When you are satisfied with your installation choices, click Install to install the package.
    A progress indicator shows the percentage of the installation completed.
  13. When the installation process is complete, a message confirms the success of the process.
    1. Click View log file to open the installation log file for the current session in a new window.
    2. Click Finish.
    After you install the product, the UI Test Agent runs automatically on your computer until you manually stop the UI Test Agent. Depending on the operating system of your computer, the UI Test Agent works as follows:
    • Windows: The UI Test Agent runs automatically and you can find the UI Test Agent in the system tray of your computer.
    • Linux: You must set the environment variable to run the UI Test Agent automatically. The UI Test Agent continues to run in the background. See the related information.
    • macOS: You must set the environment variable to run the UI Test Agent automatically. You can find the UI Test Agent on the toolbar of your computer. See the related information.

What to do next

Start the product as a root user or Sudo access for the first time. When you start the product, apply the product license key.

To start using the Visual Studio Integration feature, open the Visual Studio application and click File > New > Functional Test Project. The connector window opens within the Visual Studio and you can access the Rational® Functional Tester environment.

To create a project, you must enable Java in the product.